


Housekeeping

by onedogtown



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 22:18:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8344888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onedogtown/pseuds/onedogtown
Summary: A conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, some weeks after their marriage.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celestialskiff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/gifts).



“In this matter,” said Mr. Darcy, in response to his wife’s inquiry, “I must say that I agree with your Mrs. Collins; a surprising sentiment, I own, but I have your good word that she is a great deal more intelligent than her husband.”

“Why, you have met Charlotte yourself,” said his wife, briefly diverted. “You may as well form your own opinions of her.”

“True, we have met, though every time we came into the same room it was you who she drew away into conversation— which I may admit has helped to raise my impression of her taste.”

Mrs. Darcy smiled at this, to her husband’s fond approval, and then went on: “But it is your opinion of Lady Catherine which I want now, and whatever Charlotte’s sense, she cannot have the kind of understanding which you must have as her nephew.”

“In this instance I suspect that her understanding is as good as my own,” said Darcy, at last putting down his book. “My aunt is not one who to follow the inclinations of others where they cross her own, and not one to put aside a grievance when it may be nursed. I suppose the situation might have been defused before the wedding, but in that instance our stubbornness was equal to hers. In any case, I think expecting to visit her clergyman without a great deal of trouble is out of the question— at least until my aunt has begun to feel that she has arranged the match herself, and can begin to take pride in it.”

“I can hardly believe it of her— so petty, so small-minded! And considering Charlotte’s condition—“

“I of course agree with you, but Elizabeth, it is hardly the worst you have seen of my aunt. Wait a year, take comfort in letters, and trust that the child will be born with or without your attendance.”

To his wife, in a mood of almost uncharacteristic agitation, these words came almost as a rebuke. For an answer she only looked grieved while saying nothing, wondering how she was to proceed.

“Elizabeth,” said her husband, looking at her worriedly. “Is it such a hardship? I will grovel to her, you know— it is a skill I have been cultivating lately, in case an opportunity arises where it may be helpful.”

Mrs. Darcy smiled, as he had meant her to, but shook her head. After a moment, she said, “Perhaps I should have been practicing with you. Over the past year I seem to have made a practice of hasty judgment, and in doing so have hurt two of the people I love best.”

“My dear—“

“Of course,” she said, turning at last to him, “I feel that any pain I have given you I have well made amends for— ah, you agree? But tonight I am indulging myself by lingering over the past, and I wish I could speak directly to Charlotte, or had any expectation of speaking to her within the next twelvemonth. There are some things which are difficult to communicate in letters.” 

“What on earth have you done to Charlotte?” asked Darcy. “From the look on your face I think that it is some kind of betrayal.”

“It is a kind of betrayal— or in my view it is one.”

“I find that hard to reconcile,” returned her husband, “with the woman I so recently saw. She was quite unconscious of it.”

“Perhaps it is only in my head,” said Elizabeth, her tone serious. “It is the matter of her marriage. I was not understanding; I was unkind.”

“Is that the trouble?” asked Darcy. “I assure you, Elizabeth, that she would have been more disappointed by your whole-hearted approval than in its opposite.”

“Yes, if that had been my response, she must have been— but I was not disappointed in her choice, but in her. We had been intimate with one another for years, and spoke often of our housekeeping plans in the future. I was always careless, and joked that trusted in Jane to marry a man well enough that I could live with her if I must; I always took Charlotte for a wit when she said that she did not care who she married, if he had a house, and so I was taken aback when she did just as she had promised to do. She has been in all ways consistent in her practicality.”

“Your Charlotte is admirably cold-hearted,” said Darcy.

“Oh! not in the least— though I mistook her attitude for a lack of finer feeling. She is only unromantic.”

“For her that must be a blessing.”

“Yes— there is nothing lost to her. For her acting the part of a wife is less a burden than remaining with her family would be. You would be a worse husband than Mr. Collins in her eyes; you would be less easily persuaded to take up gardening.”

At this her husband laughed, as she had meant him to. Elizabeth Darcy looked at him with great affection, wondering whether to go on. It was such a pleasure to her to speak of Charlotte, and she had little opportunity; Jane and Georgiana, who she was closest to in her new home, did not know her so well as Elizabeth did.

She had met Charlotte Lucas when she was eighteen, and Charlotte already twenty-five, at around the time when the Lucas family was building their house; the two families had been distantly acquainted, but the two girls had not been, only due in part to their ages. Charlotte had spent most of her life in various schools and with various friends of the family, both for the purposes of advancing her matrimonial prospects; the return to her new family home was symbolic of a loss of faith in that idea. The family had had little money at the outset, and had less after making the attempt to live up to what they thought were the demands of their new station. Charlotte’s future had had to be curtailed, although her failure left a strain on finances.

Elizabeth had recognized none of this; she had been greatly impressed by Charlotte’s age and experience, and had immediately sought her out. At the time she had thought of Charlotte merely as a person who was of similar personality and outlook to herself, perhaps more intelligent and understanding than most of the people she knew. Charlotte had always kept her own council. Very quickly the two of them were visiting each other multiple times a week, and walking out together alone, and talking of almost every subject imaginable together. Elizabeth had been young and selfish enough to be grateful for Charlotte’s lack of offers, especially after their friendship increased in intimacy; this was all Charlotte’s credit. Elizabeth supposed that she herself would not have recognized it otherwise. She had never imagined not marrying as a consequence— even she was not quite so much of a romantic as that— but it had hurt her very much to find that Charlotte had.

Seeing that Darcy continued to look at her with interest, she went on: “When she married as she did, I took it as a betrayal of myself. My mother grieved over the loss of Mr. Collins; I grieved over the loss of Charlotte until I almost felt that she had deceived me in her character— we had been very close. You have a younger sister; you must know the nature of these kinds of friendships between girls.”

This was an allusion that might have been counted upon to go over the head of Charlotte’s husband. Mr. Darcy only said, “My sister is somewhat more reserved than you give her credit for— but I understand your meaning.”

“Charlotte attended many schools as a child, and assured me that these friendships were very common. In her view they faded away naturally, with age and distance. That was her experience, and I know that she had many dear school friends gradually lose all interest in correspondence upon their marriages. And yet for me it is the opposite— I feel that I understand her all the more now that I have married. She was always so much more than me in maturity; I believe that I begin to catch up. I believe that you would like her very well if you were more closely acquainted with her. In all ways she was your predecessor.”

She ended this speech by looking directly at her husband, her face not quite entreating. He took her hint, and waited only a breath before saying, “I will grovel in prose later tonight, and if I must offer William Collins his own occupation in order to provide you with his wife, then he will not be the worst candidate for the rectory we have ever had. — Now, are you happy?”

“Did you know,” answered Elizabeth, “that Charlotte was the first one who ever saw how your eyes tended towards me? When we met at Rosings, she asked about it. I suppose that she would have advised me to accept you then, purely for the sake of Pemberly.”

This was a sentiment calculated to draw approval from the breast of the husband, and yet its purpose of reassurance was misaimed; as fond a lover as he was, Mr. Darcy was too secure in his place to succumb to jealousy over his wife, especially on behalf of so unthreatening a person as Charlotte Collins. The idea of Mrs. Darcy carrying on her previous friendships did not disconcert him; he laughed at the good taste of Mrs. Collins, bade a good night to his wife, and then withdrew to his study.

 

 

That evening saw Mrs. Darcy sitting by the writing desk in the corner of her room. Her own letter to her friend was left unfinished; she could not, she had decided, feel any faith in the sense of her husband’s aunt, and she could not justify raising Charlotte’s hopes.

Still she felt very happy, and very close to being content. Her own letter halfway to written, she began to look over those she had received from Charlotte, more for the pleasure of handling them than for any unfamiliarity with the contents. Those more lately written— after Elizabeth’s wedding— she had read almost to memorization; her hands now strayed towards the earlier epistles, those written by Charlotte in the strained period after her marriage.

At the time Elizabeth had been too hurt by Charlotte’s actions to read them deeply; it was apparent that these letters were not directed towards her, but towards all members of both families, for the purpose of being passed from one hand to another and providing a brave account of married life, one that might even stand up to the scornful gaze of a Mrs. Bennet. They were bland and cheerful, stuffed with fond wishes and matrimonial incident, as dissimilar to Charlotte’s personality as could be imagined; Elizabeth had read them and felt that she was justified in thinking her friend was lost to her.

Time had given her both distance and a new interest; now Elizabeth could pick through the details of housekeeping and Mr. Collins’s amiable nature to understand a little more of Charlotte’s true thoughts. They had not been as far apart from her as she had assumed; often she was struck by Charlotte’s noting a particular path that she thought that Elizabeth would like to walk in, or mentioning a piece of ridiculous village gossip which she must have known that her friend would have delighted to hear, and more sentences than she remembered were addressed to “dear Eliza”. Rooms were described, and the business of maintaining a home, but very few other people; Elizabeth thought that Charlotte must have been alone very often. Considering the company this was, perhaps, not unwanted; and yet it must have been an odd change for her. At the end of all of the letters was that urgent little postscript, asking that Elizabeth travel with the Lucas family on their visit. Elizabeth could remember how reluctant she had been to go— and yet she had; and what good had come out of it!

At Hunsford the two of them had spent almost all of the days of Elizabeth’s visit together. There had been no argument that Charlotte could have made to surmount Elizabeth’s objections to her marriage and revive their friendship, but no argument proved to be necessary. To look at Charlotte’s satisfaction in her home weakened Elizabeth’s certainty in her own sense of condemnation; she could not have brought herself to pay a similar price herself, but she found herself forgiving the bargain made by her friend. If Charlotte had noted how her Eliza’s manner shifted towards her, she did not give any sign, but the rediscovered warmth of their friendship must have pleased her, as it pleased Elizabeth. There was a limit to what they could do, with Maria Lucas always attending, and Mr. Collins to be counted on for always being where he was most unwanted. But love and friendship had surmounted more; it was a pleasure simply to be in each other’s company.

They had seen each other once since, at the time of Elizabeth’s wedding; Charlotte had crossed country and Lady Catherine to be there, and Elizabeth could still call up the rush of joy she had felt when she saw her. Darcy had been correct to say that when she was not with him she was with Charlotte for almost her whole visit; indeed, they had almost foisted off Mr. Collins upon Darcy, who had born up heroically. 

She had not seen her since; both had the comfort of knowing that the other was happy in her home. Almost certainly they would never live so close to each other again; the houses which they had achieved were so far apart from each other that even visits, after the rift had healed, would be rare. Elizabeth already marked out her friend by their absence from each other; the letters, warm and loving as they were, served as a reminder of that absence. Elizabeth could depend on those letters, and on a place in her heart, most probably in being a godmother to her child, and on seeing her again— perhaps soon. If that remained true all their lives, Elizabeth thought, then they could still count themselves as lucky.

Elizabeth sat by her desk, lingering over the thought. She had indeed been very lucky, perhaps luckier than even Charlotte had dreamed, when she first guessed the tilt of Mr. Darcy’s thoughts— for practical Charlotte had never gone so far as to imagine a romantic future for her friend. And yet that was what Elizabeth had. A husband, a dear friend, new security for her family, two favorite sisters close by— it was past what she would have dared to hope for. Both she and Charlotte had done better, by their own standards, then they could have expected, and they would see each other again; Elizabeth decided that they would see each other before the year was out.

The letter open in front of her was the first her friend had written as Charlotte Collins. At the conclusion it read, “And now dear Eliza, I close— if you can write me back as quickly as possible I will be grateful, if you will come to see me soon I will be more grateful still.” At that moment it seemed to Elizabeth one of the most beautiful sentiments she had ever read; on a sudden impulse she picked up the letter and kissed it.


End file.
